AtomicInternet Archived News

Archived News starting from 01-24-2014 and earlier

With Overstock.com announcing they accept Bitcoin for purchases, I finally decided to wake up and pay attention to this crypto-currency that will take us into the post-apocalyptic economy. I immediately went home last week and started mining with my 3 year old GTX 460 video card to yield a 40 MH/s mining speed. I look back with my now week-old expertise in the mining field and laugh at how silly I was. Mining with GPUs has been over for months, especially with nVidia cards which only n00bs used when it was hip. The hot new thing in Bitcoin is APU mining, so I quickly secured two Bitmain Antminer U1 USB miners, putting me $120 in the hole and an amazing 4 GH/s rate, which clearly blew away anything my GPU could hope to achieve. Naturally, I decided to blow another $120 for a total of 4 of these hyper active hash crunchers, and hope to get the 8 GH/s to over 10 GH/s via my old friend overclocking. At the current difficulty rating, that will be 0.00229235 BTC or $1.78 per day. A horrible investment, but I choose to hold on to the dream that bitcoin will naturally deflate due to limited availability and the exchange rate will only rise until I'm a bonafide billionaire. Now the delusional plan is exposed, and when I read this a year from now I'll either be rich or out $240 trying to sell devices for a currency nobody wants anymore.

Lucys first trip to the North American International Auto Show was today, and she was so excited it was a whole 15 minutes before she fell asleep. The Senator and family also joined us for a double-family NAIAS outing, featuring Lexi and Lila holding hands for the majority of the event to make it harder to kidnap them. While I already own the best car at the event (Focus ST) it was fun to look at all the loser cars trying to pretend they even came close. I did make a stop at the Lexus LFA to honor it's multiplayer prowess in Forza Motorsport 5, but was disappointed when the rep informed me it wasn't really able to bounce cars into the ditch like it does so well in the game. We hit the traditional stops, including the basement which was void of the typical electric car test driving leaving a sad empty space with a few parade items that somehow fit into new car purchases. The toddlers survived a surprising 2 hours, which was more than enough time to see everything, so we were able to escape before the level 6 tantrums hit.

With the release of Basemark OS II for Windows Phone, a true cross-platform fanboy brag tool finally exists. I immediately rated my Lumia 928 only to have it crushed by the Senators iPhone 5 and Myrns iPhone 5S. Fortunately someone already posted a video of the Nexus 5 crushing both the iPhone 5 and my once yearned for Lumia 1520 so I had something to throw back in their faces. My use of the word "crush" and "crushing" are of course appropriate because even 1 point of difference is enough to warrant a fanboy escalation (and I can always fall back on "that isn't a perfect run, x factor was slowing it down!"

With no Kinect extension cord in sight for my new Xbox One, it was time to take drastic action and order a mini-entertainment center. This involved rewiring my entire sound system, and purchasing a 50ft HDMI cable of questionable quality. Fortunately Lila was more than willing to help me with the entertainment center assembly, and actually lined up the screws helped with the fasteners. I made sure to savor each moment as I'm sure it's only a few more years before she's utterly bored with helping me, preferring instead to talk exclusively to her comm implant. The end result was not as impressive as I had imagined, but much better than stringing the Xbox and Kinect in a line from the projection screen.

Today is the beginning of the coldest and snowiest week of the year, so naturally I wanted to bring Lila and Lucy to the new Dave and Busters that opened last month. We tried to visit when Lisas parents were here, only to be greeted with a 2 hours minimum wait. Today we had no such delays, as everyone is deathly afraid of the snow and decided to stay home. We made the most of the nearly empty arcade, with Lila bouncing from game to game before settling on the skiball machine where Lisa taught her the finer points of the game. A stop at the "giant claw" machine yielded a full size basketball with the Detroit Lions logo on it, something even I know is a contradiction, but Lila didn't seem to care. 2 hours later, Lila was finally showing her fatigure and Lucy was ready for something new. So ended our first and very likely least-busy visit to the new local Dave and Busters.

Christmas this year was low key since I spent all my money on a new TCL LE50UHDE5691 50in 4K Ultra LED LCD HDTV. My old plasma was finally showing it's age with the occasional 6 flashing lights of death instead of turning on, which most likely meant an expensive new ballast kit (I did still manage to craigst list it for $100 though). We entertained Lisas family this year, yielding me several achievements in Disney Infinity and Just Dance 2014 thanks to the power of energetic cousins. Lila thoroughly enjoyed the visit, and when they finally got sick of earning me points I even took them for a trip to jump zone.

With Lisa refusing to upgrade from her Lumia 800, I've obtained and sold both a Lumia 900 and Lumia 1520. While I can't complain, her luddite ways have forced me to use a SIM adapter trio to keep her SIM fitting in the 800. Of course my only real frustration is new games (with achievements) coming out that require Windows Phone 8. They are constant reminders of how far behind my wife has fallen in the phone technowars.

After debating on an extra set of winter rims and tires for my Focus ST, I opted to keep the stock summer set despite the "YOU WILL DIE A HORRIBLE DEATH IN SNOW" warning that came with the car regarding them. Today I captured the reason for this warning, but with less than 6 months on the lease I can't bring myself to fix it. I'm now confident this winter will be exceptionally harsh, and I'll be forced to buy new tires anyway when I turn in the car.

The longstanding gift one-upping between Myrn and I left off with my gift of Battlefield 4 for X360, sealing his addiction to the series and securing another squadmate in my colossal time wasting shooter. Interpreting my gift as something other than self-serving, Myrn decided to ship me some fancy Mizuno running shoes and warned me a ninja would jump out and kill me if I tried to wear them in the snow. I decided to call his bluff and sure enough, a ninja jumped out and killed me when I wore them in the snow.

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